A lot gets packed into the 31 days of March — and I’m talking about more than just March Madness and the wild spring-to-winter-and-back-again weather in Denver. After all, March plays host to both Brain Injury Awareness Month and Women’s History Month. Both offer us terrific opportunities to invite new people into conversations about our shared interests in ending violence against women and girls. For some musings on leveraging these March themes for action, check out two new Psychology Today posts: To read “Brain Injuries and Domestic Violence,” click here. To read “Intimate Violence and Wo ..read more

by Kim-Chi Pham, Maria-Ernestina, Adi Rosenthal, & Anne DePrince “One of the few people that I told that I was being sexually harassed was one of the most vocal and prominent advocates for Asian Americans. And I sort of told him, as a testing ground, to see if he would believe me. And he just looked at me like my dog died and then never asked at anything again. And a week later, I saw him introducing my abuser on an Asian American panel with the most profuse praise, and it felt like such a betrayal. And I’m like, ‘if even he doesn’t believe me, who is going to believe me?” Taiwanese-Ameri ..read more

My mother loved stories – long or short, hers or yours, finished or half-baked. For as long as I can recall, her stories were an adventure of sorts. You never quite knew where they were going to slide off some unseen edge. She might arrive mid-story and forget the end, something about the middle, or occasionally why she had started telling the tale in the first place. Undaunted or stubborn — or possibly both — she’d regroup and wrap things up with a trademark, “Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” In a way, she lived and died by stories. After a routine medical procedure went awry in ..read more

The shortest day of the year brings a mix of reflection and anticipation, including on our research team. With gratitude to our partners and collaborators, we look forward to a new year, energized by working together to build a better world — one without intimate violence. #every90seconds *** For more on working together to end intimate violence, check out Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence against Women, available from Oxford University Press or ..read more

As the daylight continues to wane and the final month of the calendar year comes into view, I’m feeling grateful for the gift of time and connection. Today’s gift came in the form of a chilly morning walk with a few TSS Group members at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Wishing you the gift of time and connection as well ..read more

This fall, the TSS Group continues our tradition of welcoming new graduate student team members! We invite you to get to know Amber Fredrick and Leah Waltrip through the following brief Q&A. Q: Welcome to the TSS Group, Amber! Tell us about yourself, please! Hi all, I’m Amber Fredrick, and I use she/her pronouns. I’m from Washington and adore the PNW. I graduated with my BS in Psychology with a minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle, and my MEd in Prevention Science from the University of Oregon in Eugene. I’ve spent two years working at ..read more

Practice radical acceptance. This advice shows up in memes, self-help columns, and the pages of books on mindfulness. It’s good advice, in line with an ever-growing literature that documents the benefits of mindfulness– and acceptance-based therapies. At first pass, though, calls to acceptance can be misunderstood. I’ve found, for example, that the advice can sometimes be heard as asking people to resign themselves to a difficult situation. That acceptance means a sort of begrudging tolerance of the status quo. In the wake of that misunderstanding, talking ab ..read more

n June 2022, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. As a trauma researcher who studies intimate abuse, the implications echoed loudly. I recall thinking (and blogging about for Psychology Today) at the time that researchers have a term for forcing people to stay pregnant: reproductive coercion. In recent years, research on reproductive coercion had been growing quickly. In the shadow of the Dobbs decision, I joined my Michigan State University colleague, Dr. Heather McCauley, and TSS Group Member, Maria-Ernestina Christl, in putting out a call for a special issue on trauma ..read more

June 27 is PTSD Awareness Day. In a world where traumas are all too common — from natural disasters to combat and mass shootings as well as sexual assault and intimate partner violence — here are a few things to know about PTSD. What Is PTSD? PTSD is short for posttraumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis that appears in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). PTSD became part of the DSM in 1980. However, PTSD wasn’t new or unique to the 20th century. Rather, the combi ..read more

A sexual assault survivor mentions feeling disconnected from people with whom she once felt close. Another explains that he feels like a stranger to himself. In interview after interview with my research team, survivors of interpersonal trauma have shared descriptions such as these. Some survived child abuse or adolescent dating violence; others, intimate partner abuse or sexual assault. Regardless of the type of interpersonal trauma, a common thread is feeling disconnected from oneself and others. Over decades of research, I’ve come to understand this h ..read more